The Senate delegations from Colorado and Washington are seeking clarification from the Obama Administration on the regulations which will impact the legal marijuana trade in those two states.

Democratic Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall of Colorado and Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington on Monday wrote a letter to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Attorney General Eric Holder, calling for “a clear, consistent and uniform interpretation and application” of federal marijuana laws in relation to their home states, reports Jonathan Topaz at Politico. The letter warns about the current uncertainty surrounding federal cannabis laws.

“We believe the federal government should support Colorado and Washington state’s effort to establish a successful regulatory framework in a way that achieves greater certainty for local officials, citizens, and business owners” in the marijuana industry, the senators wrote.

In yet another sign of the inevitability of cannabis law reform in the United States, The New York Times has called for marijuana legalization.

“It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol,” The Times Editorial Board wrote in the Sunday edition of the newspaper.

The Times Editorial Board reached that conclusion, the op-ed piece notes, “after a great deal of discussion.” One would love to have been a fly on the wall, as the tectonic plates of journalistic history worked themselves into a new configuration. The decision was, the Board wrote, “inspired by a rapidly growing movement among the states to reform marijuana laws.”

The United States and Canada should be proud of themselves. According to an annual United Nations report on global drug use, they rank among the highest in the world, when it comes to marijuana use. Nigeria and Australia join the U.S. and Canada as the highest nations on Earth.

Each of the Top 4 marijuana countries has more than 10 percent of its population, ages 15 to 64, admitting to using cannabis, reports Janissa Delzo at the Medical Daily. Western Europe also has high rates of marijuana use, but didn’t rank in the top category.

Countries with the lowest rates of cannabis use in the world are Ecuador, Paraguay (ironically, listed as a top cannabis producer), Turkey, and Romania.

Germany’s Administrative Court of Cologne on July 22 ruled that some patients suffering from chronic pain should be allowed to grow their own cannabis for therapeutic purposes.

Five patients suffering from chronic pain and other conditions had brought the complaint to the court after German’s Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) refused them permission to grow their own medical marijuana at home, reports the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines.

The court said that BfArM had to reconsider three of the rejected requests. While the plaintiffs all had permits to buy and use marijuana from a pharmacy for therapeutic purposes, they wanted to grow their own because they couldn’t afford the price of cannabis produced by the Dutch company Bedrocan, and their health insurance did not cover it.

As Floridians get ready to vote on medical marijuana in November, months of campaigning by both sides hasn’t moved the numbers at all. A new poll shows 88 percent support for medicinal cannabis, the exact same level of support shown in May.

Quinnipiac University Polling Institute’s numbers are significant, reports Dan Sweeney at the Sun Sentinel, because two well-funded opposition groups have formed since the May poll — “Don’t Let Florida Go To Pot,” a disinformation campaign from the Florida Sheriffs Association and the Drug Free America Foundation, and Vote No On 23, a project of Drug Free Florida.

As a constitutional amendment, Amendment 2, which would legalize medical marijuana in Florida, needs 60 percent of the vote to pass in November.

Colorado is successfully regulating marijuana, according to a report released on Thursday by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Effective Public Management.

“The state has met challenging statutory and constitutional deadlines for the construction and launch of a legal, regulatory, and tax apparatus for its new policy,” according to the report authored by John Hudak, a Brookings fellow in Governance Studies. “In doing so, it has made intelligent decisions about regulatory needs, the structure of distribution, prevention of illegal diversion, and other vital aspects of its new market. It has made those decisions in concert with a wide variety of stakeholders in the state.”

“This report reflects what is actually happening on the ground here in Colorado,” said Mason Tvert, the Denver-based director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) who co-directed the 2012 Colorado initiative campaign. “The state is proving that regulating marijuana works. It explains why the new law is experiencing just as much public support now as it did when voters approved it in 2012.

Eighty percent of the marijuana citations issued by the Seattle Police Department during the first half of this year were written by just one pot-hating cop — and now that officer has been reassigned.

Staff reviewing data to prepare the department’s first biannual report on marijuana enforcement found that 66 of 83 citations for public cannabis use were given out by just one officer, according to Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole, reports Eric M. Johnson at Reuters.

“In some instances, the officer added notes to the tickets,” Chief O’Toole said.

Most of us would appreciate such a warning, but an Australian airline on Wednesday is apologizing for a flight attendant’s tip to passengers that there were drug-detecting dogs waiting for them at a Sydney airport.

Many of the 210 passengers on a Sunday night Jetstar Australia flight from Canberra were coming home from the “Splendour in the Grass” weekend music festival at Byron Bay, reports Jonathan Pearlman at the Daily Telegraph.

We have been told there are sniffer dogs and quarantine officers waiting in the domestic terminal,” the flight attendant reportedly told passengers via the Airbus A320’s public address system. “If you need to dispose of anything you shouldn’t have, we suggest you flush it now.”

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